


The Right Call

by infiniteeight



Series: The Last Word [2]
Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, HUGE SPOILERS, M/M, SPOILERS FOR FALLOUT, even more spoilers than the first fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 18:44:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15669063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteeight/pseuds/infiniteeight
Summary: Hunley is visited in the hospital, first by Will and then by Ethan and the team.





	The Right Call

**Author's Note:**

> I was already thinking of writing a sequel because I wanted to get more Brandt/Hunley "on screen", and then knightphoenix2 asked for a sequel in which Ethan and team visit Hunley in the hospital, and here we are.

Slightly too-cool sheets and a quiet beeping were the first things to penetrate Alan’s awareness. It was a measure of just how long it had been since he was a field agent that he had to open his eyes to realize that those were signs that he was in the hospital.

His abdomen was awash in pain, but he must have been on morphine because while he recognized that the pain was there, he didn’t really care. Slowly, Alan turned his head, sure of what he would find. He was right; Will was sprawled in a chair next to the bed. He had to be asleep, because he didn’t react when Alan moved. It took two tries, but Alan got out a rough, “Will.”

He hadn’t managed to be very loud, but Will woke immediately anyway, blinking sleep away in an instant and shooting out of the chair. “Alan,” he said, voice full of relief, and carefully took Alan’s hand. 

Alan managed to squeeze it, though he suspected the weakness of his grip wasn’t entirely reassuring. “Hunt?” Alan asked, because if he and Will were on the same continent then the mission had to be over--the Director of Operations and the Secretary couldn’t both go to London during a crisis, and it would have taken time to get Alan stabilized enough to move him from London back to D.C.

“The plutonium’s been recovered, Walker is dead, Lane is secure with MI6, and Ethan and the rest of the team are fine,” Will said. “The details can wait until you’re stronger.” Alan nodded. As curious as he was, he wasn’t sure he was capable of understanding the details right now, nevermind remembering them. Will looked expectant, and Alan frowned, confused. “You know what I want to hear,” Will prompted him. He raised an eyebrow.

Alan clued in and groaned. “ _Now?_ ”

“Yes, now,” Will said. There was an edge to his voice. Not anger. Desperation. 

He was still scared, Alan realized. He needed normal, and nothing was more normal between the two of them than this bit of teasing. So he licked his lips, sighed slightly, and said, “Fine. You were right.”

Will’s shoulders unclenched and he managed a bit of a smile. “‘It’s too much,’ you said. ‘I don’t need an implanted comm _and_ an emergency team _and_ a way to play dead,’ you said.”

“In my defense,” Alan said, “I didn’t expect to be surrounded by corrupt CIA agents at the end of the game.” He frowned. It was likely that those agents had been with the CIA longer than two years, which meant they’d been there during his tenure as Director. 

“When Ethan is involved, expectations and plans are worthless,” Will sighed. “Which is why you couldn’t possibly have too many emergency contingencies.”

Alan’s strength was fading. He knew he’d be asleep again soon, but first: “I’ll be okay, Will.”

“I know,” Will said, but he didn’t look like he really believed it, so Alan tugged on his hand, as much as he could. Will, fortunately, took the hint and leaned down to kiss Alan slowly. “I love you,” he murmured. 

“Love you, too,” Alan managed, and then his exhausted body dragged him back down into sleep.

*

Alan woke twice more and didn’t see Will either time. He’d expected that; once he was stable there was far too much for Will to take care of to be spending every second at Alan’s bedside, even if the immediate crisis was past. He’d surely been here, Alan just hadn’t happened to wake up when he was. 

When he next saw Will, the nurses had reduced his morphine and his head was much clearer. He was even sitting up and had managed to eat something. Not that hospital food was anything to be excited about, but it meant he was stronger.

Will’s face lit up to see him looking so much better and Alan automatically smiled back. “The doctors said you were doing even better than expected,” Will said, “but I wasn’t sure if I believed them. Our sort usually make poor patients.”

“I’m capable of recognizing when others know better than I do,” Alan reminded him.

“One of my favorite qualities of yours,” Will said, coming over and perching on the edge of Alan’s bed and resting a hand on his leg. 

It might sound like a strange thing to like about a partner, but Alan knew that his willingness to admit he’d been wrong about Ethan and that whole mess with the Syndicate and to trust those who’d been right had been a major tipping point for that mission. If Alan had been more stubborn, God only knows what would have happened. Hunt probably still would have pulled it off, but there likely wouldn’t have been an IMF on the other side of it. Alan’s political connections had made that happen.

That said, being willing to acknowledge when he was wrong didn’t stop Alan from very much enjoying being right. He could admit, if only in his own mind, that he’d made the move from the CIA to the IMF as much to be right more often as because he liked that the IMF tended to be less willing to compromise certain principles than the CIA was.

“Are you feeling up to visitors?” Will asked. “Ethan, Benji, and Luther thought you were dead. I told them we got you out, but I think they won’t really believe it until they see you.”

“Yes of course,” Alan said. Will stepped out and Alan tugged on the hospital gown, frowning. Not the most dignified presentation, but it was a hospital, what could you do?

Hunt led the team into the room, features flooding with relief when he saw Hunley. Benji was just as transparent, and if Luther just nodded with satisfaction, well, that was about what Alan had expected.

“Mr. Secretary,” Hunt said as Will returned to his place on the edge of Alan’s bed. “I’m glad to see you made it.”

“Likewise,” Alan said. He paused. “I should probably get the rest of the story in order, but at the moment mostly I want to know what happened to Mr. Walker.”

“Ah.” Ethan looked almost sheepish. “I hijacked a helicopter, chased down his helicopter, crashed them both, beat the crap out of him, burned off half his face, and used a big metal hook to knock him off a cliff onto the burning remains of one of the helicopters.” 

There was a moment of silence as they all absorbed that.

Finally, Benji rubbed the back of his neck and said, “It sounds excessive, boiled down like that.”

Alan laughed. Of course Ethan Hunt would deliver revenge with extreme prejudice. “It doesn’t sound excessive to me at all,” he said, nodding down at his own torso. Alan could feel Will tense next to him and reached out to take his hand, squeezing reassuringly.

Ethan grinned, possibly relieved he wasn’t being rebuked. “Just getting the job done, sir.”

“I’m still not certain how you pull off half your missions,” Alan admitted. “I thought being there would make it clearer. For a moment, I even thought it had.” He snorted. “And then everything fell apart and somehow you _still_ came out on top in the end.”

Ethan laughed a bit himself. “I’ll confess to making most of it up as I go along,” he said. “But having a good team helps.” He cast a glance at Benji and Luther, then turned back to Alan and Will and nodded at them. “Not to mention superiors who trust me.”

“Should I expect someone to try to frame you on _every_ major mission?” Alan asked dryly, “Because this makes two, now.”

“To be fair, no really _tried_ to frame me last time,” Hunt said. “That was your idea.”

“Fair enough. But of all people you’d think that Solomon Lane and a CIA operative, even a corrupt one, would know better than to try to convince _me_ that you were the leader of a secret terrorist operation.” Alan sighed. “I spent six months convinced of that and had to admit I’d been wrong, in the end.”

“They probably thought that would make you more likely to believe, not less,” Luther pointed out. “Since you’d believed it once already.”

“Hmmm. Maybe. But they must not have done much research on me if they didn’t realize I’d spend every second of the next year making sure changing my mind wasn’t a mistake.” Alan raised his eyebrows. “Besides which, if I have learned anything about how you operate, Agent Hunt, it’s that working quietly and at a distance isn’t in your nature. If they wanted to frame you, a puppet master like John Lark is the wrong fit entirely.”

Ethan laughed and shook his head. “Explain it however you want to, sir,” he said. “In the end, you believed in me and trusted my judgment despite a hell of a lot of evidence.”

Alan smiled. “And I was right.”

~End~


End file.
